toads, or frogs, or white mice. Oh, just fancy! I am so
glad she hasn't got a gold-headed stick."

"Children," said a voice at the door, which made them all jump, though it
was such a kind, cheery voice. "Aren't you ready for tea? I'm glad to see
you are not very tired, but you must be hungry. Remember that you've
travelled a good way to-day."

"Only from London, grandmother dear," said Molly; "that isn't very far."

"And the day after to-morrow you have to travel a long way farther,"
continued her grandmother. "You must get early to bed, and keep
yourselves fresh for all that is before you. Aunty says _she_ is very
hungry, so you little people must be so too. Yes, dears, you may run
downstairs first, and I'll come quietly after you; I am not so young as
I have been, you know."

Molly looked up with some puzzle in her eyes at this.

"Not so young as you have been, grandmother dear?" she repeated.

"Of course not," said Ralph. "And you're not either, Molly. Once you were
a baby in long clothes, and, barring the long clothes, I don't know but
what----"

"Hush, Ralph. Don't begin teasing her," said Sylvia in a low voice, not
lost, however, upon grandmother.

What _was_ lost upon grandmother?

"And what were you all so busy chattering about when I interrupted you
just now?" she inquired, when they were all seated round the tea-table,
and thanks to the nice cold chicken and ham, and rolls and butter and
tea-cakes, and all manner of good things, the children fast "losing their
appetites."

Sylvia blushed and looked at Ralph; Ralph grew much interested in
the grounds at the bottom of his tea-cup; only Molly, Molly the
irrepressible, looked up briskly.

"Oh, nothing," she replied; "at least nothing particular."

"Dear me! how odd that you should all three have been talking at once
about anything so uninteresting as nothing particular," said grandmother,
in a tone which made them all laugh.

"It wasn't _exactly_ about nothing particular," said Molly: "it was about
_you_, grandmother dear."

"Molly!" said Sylvia reproachfully, but Molly was not so easily to be
snubbed.

"We were wishing," she continued, "that you had a gold-headed stick, and
then you'd be quite _perfect_."

It was grandmother's and aunty's turn to laugh now.

"Only," Molly went on, "Ralph said perhaps you'd beat us with it, and
I said no, most likely you'd turn us into frogs or mice, you know."

"'Frogs or mice, I know,' but indeed I don't